Hi Mystyler,

So there are a few things that have been thrown around here that I'd like to cover to the best of my knowledge.

The specifics of how the V40/VS40/VE40 differ from the V50/VS50/VE50 and V160/VS160/VSX60/VEX60, I cannot 100% confirm. That said, I agree with bigted that you should notice a difference between the transfer port sizes, which you would assume means that those engines are letting more fuel through which in turn produces a larger explosion and more power. That said, if you look on the Victa website right now, you'll find under the residential mowers a VE50 which reports 8 NM of torque, whereas the commercial model reports a torque of 7.8 NM. So not 100% in relation to that, I think the website is probably just wrong lol. However, the other differences that you can clearly see are the snorkel size and muffler.

Moving to some of the internals, there are several versions of the main jet. These different versions will allow a different amount of fuel through them, which can relate to power output as well.

Sticking with the internals, the diaphragm spring, you mentioned the Red spring. The mowers and their governing speed work off vacuum which is created by the flywheel, and the springs. When a mower is running at full speed, the hose at the top of the carby sucks the air out of the diaphragm cap due to a vacuum created by the flywheel (The other side of that hose is connected to the engine block, under which is the flywheel). This, in turn, pulls the poppet valve closed so as to not let too much fuel into the engine. When the engine slows down due to hitting a thick patch of grass, for example, the flywheel slows, reducing vacuum which reduces the vacuum on the diaphragm cap and allows the poppet valve to open, allowing more fuel into the engine which produces more power, which is why the engines speed up after they bog down. The spring installed in the diaphragm cap will change how much of an effect the vacuum has on the poppet valve. If you install a 250G plain spring, it will be stronger and the vacuum will have less of an effect (Resulting in the poppet valve being more open, allowing more fuel in, and running at a higher RPM), than if you installed the Red 150G spring (Which would result in the poppet valve being closed more, reducing the fuel entering the engine and RPM's). The lower the spring number, the softer the spring and the softer the spring, the easier the vacuum can pull the diaphragm and in turn the poppet valve, up. So I would assume the "Weight" of the spring would refer to how much weight it can hold/repel/resist. Make sense?

The Victa Power Torque 2 engine is the result of redesigning the engine to meet new emission standards that were introduced years ago. These engines are denoted by the VE, instead of just V or VS. I can only assume the E stands for Eco or Environmental. These engines were designed to run on 50-1 2-stroke mix I believe, and there were modifications to the spray nozzle, spray nozzle position, carby body, jet, compression, exhaust port positioning, muffler, and engine block, all to try to meet the new standards, which they did successfully. That is of course until the standards were changed again, at which point Victa said.. you know what.. we're owned by Briggs and Stratton now.. why would we re-design a classic at a huge cost to us, when we can just use our existing range of 4 stroke engines which already meet the standard...?

Just a note on the engine fins, as mentioned by Mowerfreak. Yes, the fins are heavier and longer in the newer engines, but this was done to lower engine temperatures as part of the re-design for the VE series.

For the carby needles, I've seen Black, White, Yellow, Orange, and Silver. The difference between all of them, unknown, except the Silver/Metal coloured ones, they have rubber tips to try to seal off the float chamber better.

For the carby float chamber cap and what's inside the fuel inlet port, I too have seen some with a spring looking device and others without, I'm assuming the spring is an older design but I'm not 100% sure.

I hope this helps if anyone knows I was wrong about something please correct me, I'm just going off the information I had available to me and figuring this stuff out over time, I'm not a mower or 2-stroke certified engineer/servicer or anything.

Cheers,

pau13z